Spring Break: Euro-style

10 days, 7 countries, 5 languages, 4 currencies…..all made for a very interesting and incredibly fun trip!!!

I’m first going to give an overview of my trip and then I’ll go into detail of each of the cities I visited….just fyi!

At approximately 6:04 a.m. on Friday morning, Hillary, Elyse, and I ventured off to catch a bus to the train station, to take a train to Rome, to catch a bus to the airport to fly to Geneva, Switzerland. If that wasn’t a mouthful enough, once we got to Geneva, we found my friend Laura, and then had to catch a bus, to a tram, and walk over the France/Switzerland border to get to our hotel. Oh, and yes, at this point, we were surviving on my high school French……that was interesting!

We stayed in Geneva until Sunday evening, when we took a plane to Budapest, Hungary. At this point, it was just Elyse, Hillary and I because Laura’s friend from home was coming to visit. We had to take a taxi to our hostel and somehow were successful in communicating (in English, not Hungarian) to the taxi driver where it was.

We left Budapest on Tuesday night and took an overnight train to Prague, Czech Republic. While we were there, we met up with Elyse’s friend Katie, who is studying there this semester. When we were pulling into the train station, it was snowing….definitely reminded me of back home! Prague was definitely my favorite city! (but more on that later….)

Then we left Prague to go to Vienna, Austria early Friday morning, by bus. Hillary parted from us, because her boyfriend came to Perugia, so now it was just me and Elyse- us two against the world….hahaha Anyways, we stayed there until Sunday morning, when we took a bus to Bratislava, Slovakia, a plane to Rome, and a train back to Perugia.

It was an insane trip: not just with seeing four amazing cities, but experiencing four very different cultures. It was really interesting to see all the different everyday lives and such of each city. I am disappointed that I was on almost every form of transportation besides a boat…. :/ hahaha

Assisi: Take 2

So some of my friends decided to go to Assisi for a Friday, and I thought, “Why not go again?” I probably wouldn’t normally have gone, but last time the castle was closed, and I wanted to get to see it. Just to my luck, it was closed again, but oh well!

It only takes about 20 minutes to get to Assisi, so Caitlin, Thomas, Zach, Ross, Ryan, Brian, and I all left at about lunch time. We went to an early dinner, at the most delicious pizza place in all of Umbria (as stated in many guidebooks). It was absolutely delicious!!!!

Then we went to San Francesco, again. We asked these two American women traveling through all of Italy to take pictures of all of us. They literally fell in love with the boys, and even asked Caitlin and I to step out of the picture and take one with them and the boys…..very interesting…..

Anyways, then we traveled up to the castle on top of the hill (even though it was closed, we could still see all the views from the hill. The sky was really clear, so I got some great pictures of everything, especially San Francesco. It was well-worth the trip!

Dan is in Siena....Siena is in Dan!

This is the song that my friend Caitlin made up…don’t know why, but it was really funny, so I titled this blog by the song…and sadly, Caitlin’s friend called her last minute to say she was visiting her, so Caitlin wasn’t even able to join us. So it was Elyse, her friend from school, Tina, and I who ventured off to Siena to visit their friend Dan.

So after arriving in Siena, we asked the bus driver if this one stop was our stop, and he said yes. So we get off, and can’t seem to find Dan, which meant that, no in fact, we had gotten off at the wrong point. We walked around for about 15 minutes, following signs to the center of town, and eventually Dan finds us. It was a little scary because it was about 8 o’clock at night and we were carrying a bunch of bags, but we finally made it to Dan’s apartment safely. By then we were also starving, so we went out to a wonderful dinner and then walked around town for a while, enjoying the beautiful weather.

The next morning, we decided to- you guessed it- visit more churches! (I mean, what else do you do in Europe, especially Italy?!?) We went to St. Catherine’s and then headed to San Domenico’s, where there was actually St. Catherine’s head and finger that had been preserved….very strange, but kinda cool at the same time. We walked around a ton- just looking at all different views of the city, including going up to the abandoned palace on the top outskirts of the city. Eventually we decided to head back to the main piazza, the del Campo, where literally EVERYONE congregates. Of course, we got some gelato and just people watched for a bit. It was really good weather, so it was great just sitting and eating…yummm!!!

In July and August, there are two horse races in Siena, called the Palio. They occur in the del Campo. See the city is split up into 17 contrade (districts) and each one gets one horse. The horse that wins gives the whole contrada pride and celebrations for the whole rest of the year. The horses race three times around the outside of the piazza three times. There’s tons of gambling and it’s just crazy! It’s really cool too, cuz this has been going on for hundreds of years.

So after our delicious gelato, we went to the duomo, which was actually really cool. The floor is all engraved marble, and they only let certain parts of it be shown at a time. It was really similar coloring and build to that of the duomo in Florence. By then, however, it was about time to catch our bus home. Siena was great- especially the weather when we were there- but I did miss Perugia!